Is it OK to post small feature requests directly to this list, or is there some other mechanism for them? What I have in mind certainly isn't worth a PEP.
It's better to use the SF feture request tracker: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=355470&group_id=5470&func=browse
The .split method on strings splits at whitespace by default, but takes an optional argument allowing splitting by other strings. The .strip method (and its siblings) always strip whitespace - on more than one occasion I would have found it useful if these methods also took an optional argument allowing other strings to be stripped. For example, to strip, say, asterisks from a file you could do:
fred = '**word**word**' fred.strip('*') word**word
Does this sound sensible/useful?
Marginally. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)